Lucienne is drawing extinct things.
She has drawn a fly. A skink. A turtle.
She draws them incredibly well. She puts effort in. She does her work and uses her ability and her skill and I think she’s trying to honour these things. Because as she draws, she looks at images of these now-extinct, now-dead, now-gone creatures, and she wonders about them, seeing how well they had evolved to be the commonplace miracles that every living creature is. She looks at the detail, and sees the detail, and draws it. Until the drawing is finished.

Then she takes an eraser, and rubs it out.
Because it is gone.
Because it is dead.
And because she is furious.

– Andrew Harper, FURY, Island 159

In this final 2020 episode of What are you looking at? we explore the concept of extinction through Lucienne Rickard’s Extinction Studies.

Featuring interviews with artist Lucienne Rickard and scientist and co-author of the State of the Environment report, Dr Ian Cresswell, and an excerpt from FURY, originally published in Island Magazine 159, read by writer, Andrew Harper.

This episode was produced and edited by Pip Stafford, with audio mix by Brendan Walls and additional sounds from Blue Dot Sessions.

What are you looking at? is produced for Contemporary Art Tasmania by Pip Stafford and Lisa Campbell Smith.

Extinction Studies is commissioned by Detached Cultural Organisation and presented by TMAG.

Blue Dot Sessions music is used under Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Music in order of appearance: Uncertain Ground, Powder and Egg, Dolly and Pad.